How does uKnowva fare in Comparison with SharePoint and Yammer?

Details

18 May 2016

uKnowva is an enterprise collaboration platform that boasts of extensibility and loads of customization options, in addition to its host of features. However, there are 2 strong contenders who can stop uKnowva from making it big in the market. These are SharePoint and uKnowva. Let's see how they compare with each other:

Source Code and Ownership

Parameter

Sharepoint

Yammer

uKnowva

uKnowva Advantage

Licensing

Proprietary license

Proprietary license

GPL License

With uKnowva under GPL license, MPA becomes the owner of the code deployed @ MPA's premise unlike the other proprietary license which do not allow you to change anything in their code as per your requirement or will.

Ownership of source code

Is with Microsoft

Is with Microsoft

Is with the end user, .i.e., MPA

uKnowva is open source. So, with uKnowva, if you plan to do some development at your end itself, then it is surely possible as you become the owner of the source code as soon as the code is depolyed in your premise. With proprietary licesnsing model, it is not possible to do so, you are vendor dependant.

Platform Independence

Sharepoint is Microsoft centric, so to run Sharepoint you have to use Microsoft platforms only and each one has its own licensing cost

Yammer is Microsoft centric, so to run Yammer you have to use Microsoft platforms only and each one has its own licensing cost

Platform independent

uKnowva can run on any OS like Linux, windows, etc. It is completely platform independent

Cost Effectiveness

With proprietary licenses and other supporting software licenses, proprietary solutions become very expensive

With proprietary licenses and other supporting software licenses, proprietary solutions become very expensive

Since uKnowva is platform independent and is under GPL license, it is truly a cost saver for any organization

You end up paying more and getting less at the end of the day in case of propreitory softwares, which is completely vice cersa in GPL License

Readiness for use

Sharepoint is available as a framework; to make use of it for any application, you need to first devlop the complete application and then you can deploy and use it

Yammer is available as a framework; to make use of it for any application, you need to first devlop the complete application and then you can deploy and use it

uKnowva can be deployed and started for users within 48 hours

So, within 48 hours, you can start using all in built features of uKnowva, i.e., Knowledge Management, Document Management, Social intranet, Calendars, Chat, polls, etc.

Ready add ons

Most of the add-ons for such software have a licensing cost in themselves and are not readily available for use

Most of the add-ons for such software have a licensing cost in themselves and are not readily available for use

uKnowva has many addons like Project management, Lead management, etc that can be easily installed by just click of a button and most of them are free

We have a separate Extension store where many extensions are listed which can be easily installed by click of a button. Visit our extension store: https://uknowva.com/extensions

User experience

Most of these software still have many primitive UI elements for select list, radio buttons, etc. hence resulting in poor user experience

Most of these software still have many primitive UI elements for select list, radio buttons, etc. hence resulting in poor user experience

uKnowva has its own library for latest UI elements which provides rich user experience in terms of look and feel as well as functionality, thus resulting in a great user experience

The UI of uKnowva is the crux of the product and it uses the latest HTML5 / CSS3 based technology which makes the application very user friendly and responsive

Ease of Administration

To Administer Sharepoint, you need a skilled resource separately

To Administer Yammer, you need a skilled resource separately

It can be easily administered by any person who knows how to use a browser

uKnowva's configuration and administration options are so user friendly that any person who knows how to browse a website can easily administer it

Ease of Development

You need specially trained resources to develop in Sharepoint

You need specially trained resources to develop in Yammer

PHP developers can easily develop applications in uKnowva

uKnowva is built on PHP, so anyone knowing PHP can easily program / alter uKnowva based applications

Integration capabilities

Being Microsoft dependant, such software provide integration support only for Microsoft-based applications

Being Microsoft dependant, such software provide integration support only for Microsoft-based applications

Easily integrates with open source as well as proprietary softwares

uKnowva is platform independent and hence can integrate with all kinds of application.For Example: When you are using sharepoint, etc. AD integration is easily possible, but integration with OpenLDAP (which is an open source alternative to AD) is difficult, but both can be easilty integrated in uKnowva

Support

Support is very dependent on Microsoft/vendor

Support is very dependent on Microsoft/vendor

Support is directly from developers and it is not vendor dependent

uKnowva is developed by Convergence IT Services PVT LTD. Having their team on board, you can be sure of excellent support as the main developers themselves would be assisiting you for any technical support. If you have an inhouse support team for PHP, then you can easily support the application by yourself, this makes you vendor independent